Anchor in the Storm
by FaithLestrange
Summary: Shepard isn't sure where she fits anymore and nothing is as it should be. Cerberus, Kaidan, nothing makes sense. But a certain turian remains constant. FemShep/Garrus. *ME2 SPOILERS*
1. Chapter 1

_Disclaimer: Mass Effect 2 belongs to BioWare, not to me._

_**LOTS OF SPOILERS FOR ME2, You've been warned.**  
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_A/n: Honestly, the idea of being with Garrus didn't really occur to me during Mass Effect 1, but when the option came up in ME2, I fell in love with the pairing. Garrus was so awkward and cute about it in the game that it made me really like him. I plan on writing this through up to the culmination of ME2 :)_

_Pairing: FemShepard/Garrus, with some FemShepard/Kaidan mixed in for that extra angst flavor_

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Two years.

It had been _**two years**_ that she'd been dead. Okay, more specifically it had been two years that she'd been nothing but "meat and tubes" to use Jacob's words.

And Shepard was in a sort of limbo in this unforeseen future she now found herself in. She had no center, no compass, no path. There was the mission, yes, but that was one of the only things left to cling to by her fingernails and keep her sane. And the sane part was debatable.

The only ones on 'her side' were the vary same she would have been least inclined to trust before waking up in this dream universe.

Soldiers were meant to be ready for anything; to adapt. But this was just too much to cope with at once. She wondered sometimes if the term 'soldier' was still appropriate. She didn't feel like much of a soldier. She felt like a... well, a rebel or some renegade who'd decided the end's justified the means. And she hated it. Hated being thrown into a situation that flipped the balance between friend and foe.

She was working with Cerberus, for god's sake! A xenophobic organization that had committed atrocities that made her sick to the stomach even thinking about. Experiments on thorian creepers and rachni, killing Admiral Kahoku. And then there was Jack, of course. If someone had told her of the eventuality of working with Cerberus two years ago she would have laughed her ass off. That or she would have threatened them with her 'very big gun'.

It was out of necessity. At least that was what she kept trying to convince herself of. But if she were to be completely honest, she simply had no where else to go. No one else in the galaxy was willing to address the Reaper threat.

Anderson had seemed sympathetic, but the damn Council was as stubborn as they'd ever been. And even having Anderson on said council did little to change that fact. If anything, since coming back from the dead they'd become even more hostile toward her. She'd saved their asses from Sovereign and they repaid her by making her out to be some delusional woman duped by Saren into believing the Reaper threat existed. Like it was all some fantasy, that she'd been tricked into believing. But she wasn't some idiot child and she knew the truth that the Council had apparently chosen to ignore. And it royally pissed her off.

Then there had been Kaidan. The way he'd looked at her when he'd realized she was working with Cerberus. Out of necessity, she'd tried to explain. But it had sounded as hollow & disingenuous to him as it had to her. She'd thought that just maybe he'd understand. That he would follow her into hell, damn the consequences, but no such luck. He'd kept her grounded before; after the Council had but the kabosh her attempts to stop Sovereign attacking the Citadel.

And now. when she had really truly needed someone to understand her side to avoid breaking inside? When she'd needed someone to tell her she was doing the right thing? He'd shut her out said she'd betrayed _**him**_. Betrayed him! She'd been dead, for fuck's sake! It's not like she could have written him a letter! And Cerberus was the only group that was doing what needed to be done, even if their methods were questionable.

Kaidan had looked at her with such disgust that it had made her ache inside.

And so it came to pass, that Shepard had lost her strongest anchor and was slowly but surely drifting away. Maybe she was still floating somewhere out in space slowly losing her oxygen supply. Maybe this was all just some vivid hallucination her brain had cooked up to deal with oxygen deprivation.

"Dammit Kaidan! You're so focused on Cerberus that you're ignoring the real threat!"

And there it was. She felt her self returning slowly to solid ground. There was a new anchor to keep her. No. No, that wasn't right. It wasn't new. It had always been there. She just hadn't seen it properly until now.  
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Garrus. _

The turian & former C-Sec officer who had been there since the beginning. Always in the background and not at the forefront of her mind, but still... always there.

And he hadn't left her. And he appeared to trust her completely. Effortlessly. And why did Garrus trust her so easily, when Kaidan clearly didn't?

Kaidan supposedly 'loved' her. Weren't the ones who loved you supposed to trust you? Weren't they at least supposed to give you the benefit of the doubt? Wasn't that how it worked? She hadn't been in love enough times to know for sure, but she'd seen enough romance vids to know that was the way it was supposed to work in a perfect universe. But life and fiction were hardly ever similar.

She was on the verge of cracking completely on the trip back to the Normandy. She should have been focused on the Collectors, but her mind couldn't shake that look she'd seen on Kaidan's face. Betrayal. It was the look that she couldn't help but think deserved to be on her own face, not his. What right did he have to call her a traitor? Her teeth clenched tightly and she could hear the grinding of her molars reverberate all the way to the back of her skull. Her hands were clenching and unclenching. She needed to maintain her composure for the sake of her crew, but it was proving difficult. She had this overwhelming desire to kill something-- gah! Maybe she was spending too much time around Grunt.

She felt a presence close to her side and looked up from her seat on the shuttle. Garrus had sat right next to her. Very close to her, she couldn't help but notice.

He didn't speak, but his predatory eyes were watching her carefully. They were assessing & deeply calculating. But they were kind eyes nonetheless.

She'd met so few turians before the mission against Saren. Before she'd always seen them as intimidating, and frankly downright scary to look at up close. They were like prehistoric raptors staring you down like you were their next meal.

Having one look at her so closely should have been unsettling. But it was Garrus. He wasn't just some turian. She barely even thought of him in such a base terms anymore. When she saw him, she saw Garrus Vakarian. Not Garrus Vakarian, the turian. And it felt comforting; him watching her like that.

She felt her heart lurch, when she wondered if there would ever be a day when he stopped trusting her too like Kaidan had. Shepard wasn't sure what she would do then. She felt so lost now, more so than she ever had. But if Garrus left her too...and when he'd nearly died on Omega she'd been so scared...

Something must have shown in her eyes, because Garrus's mandibles flapped outward then slowly retracted like he was considering something to say. He looked uncomfortable for a second and then his eyes shifted from her to the floor..

"So that boyfriend of yours was a real douche-bag, Shepard." Jack commented offhandedly from the other side of the shuttle, "See, that's why I _'fuck 'em and leave 'em'_. Less drama that way, ya know?"

Shepard's eyes drifted away from Vakarian who was avoiding her gaze, to look over at the tatooed biotic across from her. Jack was fiddling idly with her favorite pistol. Shepard gave her a half-hearted smile, "Thanks for the advice, Jack. I'll keep it in mind."

Jack leaned casually back in her seat and nodded at her. After a moment a mischievous grin spread over her face. "Hell, maybe you should screw the turian," she nodded toward Garrus, "both of you are so fucking uptight, I'm sure both of you could use the release."

Garrus let out a surprised chuff followed by a few intelligible noises at the comment and Shepard was sure she'd turned several shades of red. It was dark in the shuttle so maybe no one would notice, but based on the self-satisfied smirk on Jack's face it was doubtful.

Getting back to the Normandy and off this shuttle couldn't come fast enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I don't own ME2, it belongs to Bioware**

**A/n: Wow, guys thank you for all the reviews, it made me feel really good to know that people enjoyed it. It gave me a good kick in the butt to get out a next chapter. Hope you like it!**

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When he'd seen her crossing that bridge on Omega pistol in hand, he'd thought he'd been hallucinating due to exhaustion. He'd tossed it up to his wild imaginings. His wild hopes. Sure, Shepard had always seemed this indomitable figure... but dead was dead. It was hard to come back from that.

But then the hallucination had started gunning down mercs, and Garrus was pretty sure he hadn't gotten quite so delirious that he'd be imagining that. And then there she was, in all her glory standing right in front of him. With two Cerberus agents in toe.

He'd put up a front when she'd come up the stairs to greet him. Like he hadn't a care in the world. It was a lie. He'd thought he was going to die; he had been resigned to it. And then there she was, like an angel to pull him back from the brink.

_"Garrus!"_

The happiness in he'd heard in her voice had made his heart wrench. It had been two long years of agony on his part, and it all of it fell away with the sound of his name on her delicate human lips.

When she'd died, he'd felt without purpose. He'd drifted and fallen apart just as surely as the Normandy crew itself had without her steady presence. And the Council had done everything within their power to make Shepard and her crew disappear into obscurity. He'd felt for Kaidan after she'd gone. But a part of him couldn't help the creeping jealousy within him that Alenko had been so much closer to the Commander than he'd ever been able to.

He'd had nowhere to go, but back to his old life. But C-sec had felt like a bad joke after all he'd done with Shepard. The job felt foreign and pointless. He simply wasn't the same C-sec officer he'd been before the Saren incident.

He'd always hated injustice, but back then had felt helpless to stop it. But then with Shepard...Shepard had always done something about it.

He'd lost himself in anger at the unfairness of the universe. Killers, rapists, and thieves thrived everywhere he looked. Why did they get to live, when Shepard didn't?

He'd idolized her from the start. Commander Shepard was the epitome of a hero. She was unlike any human he'd ever encountered before. Loyal to the human Alliance, yes, but she held no grudges toward aliens like the other Alliance soldiers clearly did. Like Ashley had. She'd accepted him onto her ship with open arms. It didn't matter that he was a turian. The First Contact War didn't linger in her mind like most. She trusted people. She trusted them until they gave her a reason not to. It was one of many things that he'd silently admired about her. It was something he'd tried to replicate on Omega. But he was no Shepard, that was painfully clear to him now. He'd trusted the wrong person. And now his whole crew was dead and the blame lay solely on his shoulders.

He'd wondered if he'd ever trust anyone again. Then Shepard was there to save his life in more ways then one. She'd asked for his help in return. She needn't have even asked. He wouldn't have had it any other way. And he didn't care that she was working for Cerberus. She could have been commanding a dilapidated tug-ship manned only by Terra Firma supporters and he would have followed her.

Garrus had denied his feelings for the human woman for a long time, during their time together aboard the first Normandy and after, because they were foolish. And she only had eyes for Alenko anyway. To Liara's dismay as much as his. And he'd tried to convince himself that he didn't find humans particularly attractive...but then she wasn't just any human...

He shook his head. It was silly. And he knew it.

Garrus couldn't deny that it had torn him up inside when she'd died. He'd seen the Normandy ripped in two by a Collector vessel and he'd lost more than just a Commander and a good friend that day.

He'd told himself so many times afterward that if he'd only been given a second chance he'd have done something, anything, to let Shepard know how he felt. And on Omega, it was like his wish had been granted... but he couldn't bring himself to say a damn word. _Coward._

And like any coward he'd convinced himself that doing nothing was the right course of action. Shepard deserved someone better than his disillusioned wreck of a self. She didn't need some scarred-to-shit turian chasing her around like a domesticated varren. She probably didn't even think of him like that anyway. Hell, he questioned his own sanity that he thought of her as more than a close friend. It was just so wrong. And impossible. A hopeless crush. So, he'd decided to leave it like that; as something unattainable & unrequited.

Then Horizon happened. He was so angry at Kaidan that he wanted to throttle the human's fragile little neck. Kaidan had what Garrus so desperately wanted, and he had spat in her face. Shepard deserved better than that. She didn't betray anyone, least of all Kaidan Alenko.

She'd be the last person in the galaxy to knowingly betray someone. It was Kaidan who was the traitor. It was like he didn't even know what he had in Commander Shepard.

And then Jack had opened her mouth on the shuttle.

What a disaster. Shepard couldn't even look at him for the rest of the ride back to the Normandy. Clearly Shepard was disgusted by the crazy biotic's suggestion. And why shouldn't she be?

Garrus sighed to himself while standing above the main battery's computer console.

He resolved that he would at least see that Shepard had a loyal friend at her side. Garrus would stand up for her. He could do that much. He didn't trust Cerberus' intentions in the slightest. He'd been there with Shepard at the testing facilities with the creepers and the rachni. He knew what they were capable of. He was worried about her. And Garrus wasn't about to let Shepard get herself killed again.

Shepard came around to visit him often in the main battery. He had to confess he looked forward to their talks, even while simultaneously dreading the pain dredged up by them. Garrus saw something in those strangely large human eyes of hers. He wasn't completely adept at reading human emotions, but he'd spent enough time with Shepard and her crew on the previous Normandy to know that she wasn't about to stop asking about what happened on Omega and just let it go.

She was worried about him, concerned. Shepard may have been able to ferret out of him most of the details of his situation on Omega, but he couldn't talk about his feelings. Couldn't talk about his guilt or how he wanted to see Sidonis flayed alive. Garrus was normally so closed off to people, but she opened him up like a cadaver on a coroner's table, but not in this instance.

But this wasn't like before. He couldn't talk about everything to anyone, and her especially. It was all too painful. It was like he'd failed her as much as his own crew. When he'd been on Omega facing his death and wallowing about his crew's deaths... he'd thought that he'd failed her memory. He wanted Sidonis to pay. He wanted to see his brain blown out the back of his skull from the vantage point of his scope.

Shepard came by and Garrus knew that she wanted to talk about it more. She was too caring and too perfect. And he was too flawed and too damaged.

She asked if he could talk. Garrus feigned a look behind him toward the console.

"Can it wait, for a bit? I'm in the middle of some calibrations."

She looks anything but convinced, but lets it slide.

Shepard smiles lightly before leaving, "I'll talk to you later, Garrus."

Garrus turned back to his console, but glanced over his shoulder to see her walking away. He felt a sense of desperation in that moment. He needed her to know that he's was there for her.

His mouth opens and words fail him. He settles on a, "I'll be here if you need me." and curses himself for his inability to tell the woman the truth about everything.


End file.
